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CHAPTER XII
Did Jesus Ever Live?
The Modern Denial -- The Fiction of the Gospels --
Jewish and Pagan Witnesses -- A Broad View
THE MODERN DENIAL
THERE were hundreds of Jesuses. A life of the Rabbi Hillel, if
we had one suitably embroidered with miracles, would be a life of
Jesus. A life of the slave-moralist, Epictetus, if we had one,
would be a perfect life of Jesus. The life which we have of the
wandering apostle Apollonius of Tyana is a life of Jesus. The chief
teachings, even the phrases and sentiments to a great extent, were
common to priests of Isis, Serapis, Esmun, Apollo, Mithra, Ahura-
Mazda, and Jahveh, as well as wandering Stoic apostles.
Every single moral sentiment attributed to Christ in the
Gospels has several parallels in the literature of the time. There
is not one point in the "teaching of Christ" that was new to the
world. Even the parables were borrowed from the Jewish Rabbis. The
chief doctrinal features of the Christ of the Gospels -- the birth,
death, and resurrection -- were familiar myths at the time, and
were borrowed from "the pagans."
What we see, in fact, is evolution in religion. The ideas pass
on from age to age, a mind here and a mind there adding or refining
a little. The slow river of human evolution had entered its rapids.
The mingling of twenty nations in a series of world-empires had
brought about such a clash of ideas as the world had never seen
since until our time. Every possible shade of moral idealism and
religious thought was represented, from Alexandria to Rome. You
could blot Christ out of the history of the first three centuries
of the "Christian Era" -- what happened after that is a different
matter, as we shall see in due time -- and it would make no more
difference than cutting a single tree out of a well-wooded
landscape.
Blot out Christ! Yes, that is what many serious scholars are
now attempting to do, and we must consider that first. It is, to
the Rationalist, to any man who resents this long distraction of
the race by the Christian religion, a tempting proposition. Suppose
we could prove that there never had been on this earth such a
person as Jesus! What an ironic consummation! Yet this modern
denial is so weighty that we find so cautious and courtly an
authority as Sir J.G. Frazer writing, in his introduction to Dr.
P.L. Couchoud's recent "Enigma of Jesus," that "whether Dr.
Couchoud be right or wrong" in denying the historicity of Jesus,
"he appears to have laid his finger on a weak point in the chain of
evidence on which hangs the religious faith of a great part of
civilized mankind."
THE FICTION OF THE GOSPELS
The less learned of the clergy pour fine scorn on the modern
denial of the historicity of Jesus. It is a humorous illustration,
they say, of the extravagances of the spirit of denial. There is a
legend amongst them that an archbishop once showed that on the same
principles you could prove that Napoleon I never existed: which
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certainly would be a humorous thing to do, as there were plenty of
people still living in the archbishop's time who had actually seen
Napoleon! I have myself known old ladies who remembered his death.
The ordinary believer is startled by, and is apt to be
impatient of, the very question which forms the title of this
chapter. But a very little reflection, if he will condescend to it,
will show him that it is a quite serious question. A number of
characters whose historical existence was as certain as the sun to
whole ages -- King Arthur, Homer, William Tell, etc. -- have proved
to be legendary. Adam is certainly a legend: Moses and Abraham are
most probably legends: Zarathustra is doubtful. if the historicity
of Jesus is so very certain, there must be some quite indisputable
witnesses to it. Who are they?
The Gospels. Now, just as science is said to be "organized
common sense," so modern scientific history organizes or directs
common sense in these matters. Who wrote the Gospels? No one knows.
They are entitled "According to Matthew," etc., not "by Matthew,"
etc., in the oldest Greek manuscripts and in early references to
them. Indeed, even if they professed to be written by Matthew,
etc., it would not follow that they were. But they do not profess
this. Many scholars think, on very slender grounds, that the third
Gospel was actually written by Luke. We shall see; though it
matters little for our purpose, as the writer expressly says that
he was not an eye-witness. He is, he says (i, 1-3), writing down
for a friend, as "many" others have done before him, an account of
what they have heard about Jesus.
What we want to know about the Gospels is whether the men who
wrote them were in a position to know the facts. In ordinary
history we ask two questions about any writer: what was his
knowledge of the facts, and is he truthful? In dealing with
religious documents, especially Oriental documents, we have to be
particularly critical. Let me illustrate this.
About twenty years ago Mr. Myron H. Phelps wrote an account
("Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi") of the origin of the new
Babi or Babai religion which was then finding adherents in America.
It arose out of the teaching of a Persian reformer, Ali Mohammed,
called "the Bab" (gate). Like Christ, but in the year 1844 A.D.,
Ali Mohammed set out to reform the accepted creed and to bring
people back to the worship of a purely spiritual God. He and
hundreds of his followers were put to death, in 1850, by a
combination of Persian priests and government; and what Sir J.G.
Frazer calls "the bribe of immortality" had no place in the faith
of those fearless martyrs. But the significant point is this: two
or three years after the death of the Bab his life was written, and
it was a purely human account of a Christ-like man; but some
decades later a new life appeared richly embroidered with miracles
in the Gospel manner!
What happened in the East in the nineteenth century could,
surely, happen in the first century. If these lives of Jesus, the
Gospels, were not written until some decades after his death, we
must read them with great caution. The American Fundamentalist, who
is the last to realize this, ought to be the first. He knows well
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how Catholic enthusiasm still makes miracles at Lourdes and St.
Anne. Enthusiasm, even innocently, always glorifies its cause with
miracles. In the early days of Spiritualism an eminent British
judge published some remarkable experiences he had had a few years
before; and he was compelled, in great confusion, to admit that his
!memory was entirely wrong and he had misstated the facts in every
important detail.
It is therefore most important to know when the Gospels were
written. If they were not written until several decades after the
death of Christ -- if the stories about Christ passed merely from
mouth to mouth in an Oriental world for a whole generation at least
after his death -- it is neither reasonable nor honest to put
implicit faith in them. There were no journals in those days. Few
people could read and write. Moreover, the Jews were scattered over
the earth by the Romans in the year 70 A.D.; and the Christians had
previously been scattered by the Jews themselves. What should we
make of a story going from mouth to mouth in such conditions as
these for several decades?
However, let us approach the subject on common-sense lines.
How are we to test whether the writers of the Gospels knew the
facts and did not merely put on parchment what was being said in
the obscure and scattered Christian communities? Some Christian
writers try to apply what are called internal tests. They say that
the description of places and customs and daily life in Judea is so
confident and precise in the Gospels that the writers were
evidently familiar with the country in the time of Christ.
Tests of this kind are very delicate and uncertain. In one of
Mr. H.G. Wells' novels -- "Marriage," I think -- the story is
partly located in Labrador, which is minutely and accurately
described. I found that few people had any doubt but that Wells had
been there. But, when the able novelist was writing that book, he
told me that he had just collected all the available books on
Labrador and was "steeping himself" in the subject. He has never
been near Labrador. Similarly, Prescott, the vivid American
historian of the conquest of Mexico and Peru, never saw either
land. He was blind.
A careful writer can easily "get up" a country in this way --
Keeping common sense as our guide, however, we will not suppose
that a number of early Christians "got up on" Galilee and Judea in
order to write lives of Jesus. In point of fact, they have only a
very general and often inaccurate knowledge. Mark is generally
admitted to be the oldest Gospel, and it is by no means detailed
and precise in topography. In others, such as Luke, there are
historical errors. Luke admittedly did not know Judea.
But we need not linger over tests of this sort. Take the book
of Daniel. It is as vivid and precise and circumstantial as any
Gospel; and it is quite demonstrably a forgery written centuries
after the time it describes. We should say the same of a very great
deal of the Old Testament. Such tests are useless. They would break
down hopelessly in Homer. They would prove that Dante had really
visited hell. They would make Keats a native of Corinth.
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The first condition of any confidence in the Gospels is to
ascertain that the writers lived within a reasonable time of the
events described; and one hundred and fifty years of biblical
scholarship have not succeeded in finding any proof of that. At
present the general opinion is that Mark, the oldest Gospel, was
written between 65 and 70 A.D.; and Matthew and Luke in the last
decade of the first century; and John in the second century. Mark,
it will be remembered, knows nothing about the miraculous birth of
Christ; the first account of that turns up at least ninety years
after the supposed event!
Moreover, the resurrection story and other details are not
supposed, and cannot be proved by anybody, to have been in Mark by
the year 70. Scholars have come to the conclusion that there
existed at first a simple sketch of the life of Jesus which is the
groundwork of the first three Gospels (and is best seen in Mark)
and a collection of teachings which is most used by Matthew. At
what date this sketch was written nobody knows. What precisely was
in it nobody knows. You cannot put your finger on a single verse
and say that it is part of the original Gospel. And, even if you
could, there is not a scrap of evidence that it was written within
thirty years of the death of Christ. Remember Ali Mohammed and his
miracles!
If a religious reader thinks that he can dismiss all this as
"Higher Criticism stuff," and points out how much these critics
have changed their theories and how contradictory they are, let him
reflect on his own position. He trusts the Gospels without any
evidence whatever; without making the least inquiry into their
authority. His preachers dogmatically say that the Gospels were
"inspired" -- though the opening verses of Luke plainly say the
contrary -- and he takes their word as simply as a child does.
This "Higher Criticism," which he hears so much reviled, is a
very serious and conscientious effort of Christian divines,
sustained now for more than a hundred years, to prove that the
Gospels are worthy of ordinary historical credence. It has failed.
The miraculous birth, the death on the cross, the resurrection and
ascension, and the healing miracles, it is compelled to sacrifice
altogether. By great effort it then concludes that some sort of,
small Gospel or life of Jesus was in existence thirty years after
the death of Christ; but that is too late to be reliable, and no
one knows exactly what it said.
Moreover, while there is no evidence at all that the Gospels,
our Gospels, existed before the end of the first century, there is
very serious evidence that they did not. No Christian writer
mentions one of our four Gospels until a hundred years after the
death of Christ or makes any clear and certain quotation from any
one of them. That is serious, surely. Yes, you may say, if it is
true; but it may be another bit of Higher Criticism or of
Rationalism. It is not. It is the very serious verdict of a
committee of historians and divines appointed to study this
question by the Oxford (University) Society of Historical Theology,
an ecclesiastical society. They courageously published this
disappointing result of their labors in "The New Testament in the
Apostolic Fathers" (1905).
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Pope St. Clement of Rome, for instance, wrote an important
letter, which we have, about 96 A.D.; and a second letter bearing
his name, though probably a Christian forgery, was written later.
About the same time, or a little earlier, there were the so-called
"Epistle of Barnabas" and the first part of the "Teaching of the
Apostles." These never quote from, or refer to, the Gospels. For
the first three decades of the second century we have the second
part of the "Teaching," the "Pastor" (supposed to be by "Hermas"),
and letters of Bishops Ignatius and Polycarp. Not one of these
mentions the Gospels or makes a clear quotation from them. They
quote certain words which roughly correspond to words in Matthew,
Luke and (at a late date) John; but this proves nothing, as by the
second century these sayings of Christ certainly circulated in the
Church. We must say the same of the "Sayings of Our Lord" (or
"Logia"), a second-century fragment containing seven "sayings," two
of which are in the Gospels. It has no significance whatever,
unless it be to discredit the Gospels. The writer clearly knew of
no Gospel collections.
It is not until about 140 or 150 A.D. that Christian writers
refer to and quote from the Gospels. They are clearly known to
Justin, Marcion and Papias. The latter, the Bishop of Herapolis, an
ignorant and credulous man who writes a good deal which nobody now
believes, is known to us only from quotations in the fourth century
historian Eusebius; a man who notoriously held that the use of
statements to the Church was more important than their accuracy.
This fourth-century quotation of a second-century obscure bishop is
the only "serious" evidence for the Gospels! Papias says that he
learned from older men that Mark and Matthew really wrote Gospels.
That is not evidence that any historian would credit, and, in fact,
divines do not believe it.
In order to realize the full significance of this, it is
necessary to know a little more about the early Christian world
than a Christian usually knows. He imagines just a loyal group of
virtuous men and women meeting secretly here and there, at Corinth
or Ephesus or Thessalonica, to break bread and pray to Jesus. On
the contrary, from about 50 to 150 A.D., early Christianity was a
most intense ferment of contradictory speculations. Greek, Persian,
Jewish, Egyptian, and all kinds of religious ideas were blended
with Christianity. We know the names of at least a score of
Christian intellectual leaders and sects of the time. Gradually, of
course, these people were thrust outside the Church and called
"Gnostics"; but in the first century and the early part of the
second Christian communities everywhere swarmed with these mystics.
It was in such a world that the Gospels gradually took shape.
The idea of the average believer, that someone sat down one day
and, under inspiration, wrote a "Gospel according to Matthew," and
so on, is naively unhistorical. The writer of Luke indicates what
happened. For decades the faithful merely talked about Christ. Men
like Paul went from group to group, much as the cheapest types of
revivalists do today, and talked about Jesus. Probably few of them
could read, in any case; and Paul, to judge by his Epistles, had
very little to say about an earthly life of Jesus. Then, here and
there, some who could write put upon parchment what was being said.
All sorts of wild and contradictory stories about Jesus were going
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about. Our four Gospels are just four that were selected in the
fourth century out of a large number. These little biographies and
lists of "sayings" grew larger and larger. There was no central
authority to check them; the various communities were a day's, or
even a week's, journey apart; and travel was costly for poor folk.
There was not the slightest approach to what we call
standardization.
So it is mere waste of time to write a Life of Jesus by a sort
of intelligent selection of what you think is probable in the
Gospels. All the Rationalist and other such biographies, from
Strauss and Renan to Papini, are just subjective compilations. You
may think it probable that Jesus really did this or that, but you
cannot call it an historical fact because it is in the Gospels. The
figure of Jesus, the biography, grew, as time went on. And, since
that growth took place, during at least half a century of unchecked
speculation and argumentation, in a world of Oriental mysticism and
theosophy, you see the strength of the writers who hold that Jesus
(as many of the Gnostics held) never was a man at all.
JEWISH AND PAGAN WITNESSES
On the very day on which I begin to write this chapter, the
leading Sunday newspaper of Britain, the Observer, has a prominent
article on "Jesus Christ in History." The pretext of it -- a claim
that new evidence has been found -- I will discuss presently; but
a part of the article must have surprised many people.
The writer is an orthodox and respected English theologian,
Dr. Burch. He is going to publish a book about this supposed new
evidence for the historicity of Jesus. Meantime, as his publishers
naturally will not allow him to give away the great secret, he
writes articles in connection with it.
In this article he deals with "the scantiness of references to
Christ in the histories which have come down to us." He quotes "the
ablest Jewish book on the whole subject," Klausner's recent "Jesus
of Nazareth", and he shows that, in the way of non-biblical
witnesses to Christ, we have only "twenty-four lines" from Jewish
and pagan writers, and four of those are spurious. Of the twenty
genuine lines twelve (which are almost universally regarded as
spurious) are in the Jewish historian Josephus. In the immense
Latin literature of the century after the death of Jesus there are
only eight lines; and each of these is disputed.
Certainly a disturbing silence from the Christian point of
view. We might argue that, since the Jews were very hostile to the
Christians, their great writers, Philo and Josephus, would be not
unnaturally reluctant to speak about them. We might suggest that
the teaching and crucifixion of Jesus, more than a thousand miles
away from Rome, in a very despised province, would not be likely to
come even to the notice of a Roman writer. Yet how strange, how
ironic, that God should have lived on earth, for the salvation of
men during thirty years, and consummated a great sacrifice which
dwarfs every other event in human history, and the stream of
literature can flow on for a hundred years without more than half
a dozen disputed lines on these transcendent miracles!
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We are trying to take a common sense view of religious
problems, using whatever aid we can get from modern science and
modern history. Now from that point of view there does not seem to
be much importance in this discussion of the non-Christian
references to Christ. We have to deal with them because the theme
of this chapter is the historicity of Christ, and we have to ask
whether, since there are no Christian witnesses except the late and
anonymous Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, there are any Jewish or
pagan witnesses. But for the reasons I have just given I should not
be greatly astonished if there were none at all. What was Jesus, or
the Jesus cult, to the Greeks and Romans of the first century? One
Asiatic superstition amongst many. They would hardly hear of it. It
was only when Christianity became an organized religion, giving
trouble to the imperial authorities, that they could be expected to
notice it.
The argument is less strong as regards the Jewish writers. The
more learned of these, Philo, who was born about the same time as
Jesus, could scarcely be expected to mention Jesus and his
followers. He was an Alexandrian Jew, and he wrote mainly on
philosophy. An aristocrat of great wealth and culture, he would,
even if he heard during his visit to Jerusalem of the new sect, not
have any reason to speak of it in his works. His silence can mean
no more than that Christianity was not of much importance in the
world of his time.
It is very different with the historian Flavius Josephus. He
was a Palestinian Jew, born at Jerusalem in 37 A.D., a man of high
connections and great culture. He was intensely interested in
religious questions, and he gives in one of his works so detailed
an account of the Essenian monks, with whom I shall suggest that
Jesus was connected, that many suspect that he may for a time have
lived in one of their monasteries. After the destruction of
Jerusalem (70 A.D.) he resided in Rome and wrote his works, the
chief of which are his "History of the Jewish War" and "Jewish
Antiquities." In one or other of these lengthy and exhaustive works
he would, though a Pharisee, reasonably be expected to speak of
Jesus and his followers. He even includes, in his "Jewish
Antiquities," a full and unflattering portrait of Pontius Pilate;
and he tells of other zealots and reformers than Jesus in the
Jewish history of the time.
Now in the "Jewish Antiquities," as we have the book, we read
the following passage (xviii, 3)
About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed be
should be called man. He wrought miracles, and was a teacher
of those who gladly accept the truth, and had a large
following among the Jews and pagans. He was the Christ.
Although Pilate, at the complaint of the leaders of our
people, condemned him to die on the cross, his earlier
followers were faithful to him. For he appeared to them alive
again on the third day, as god-sent prophets had foretold this
and a thousand other wonderful things of him. The people of
the Christians, which is called after him, survives until the
present day.
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This passage is so obviously spurious that it is astonishing
to find a single theologian left in our time who accepts it. No
competent theologian or historian does. Josephus was a zealous Jew:
and most of this is rank blasphemy from the Jewish point of view.
There is a hint that Jesus was divine: he is said to have taught
the truth, to have wrought miracles, and to have risen from the
dead; and the messianic prophecies are expressly referred to him.
To imagine Josephus writing such things is preposterous. It is a
Christian interpolation.
But was a real reference to Jesus cut out by the Christian
interpolator and replaced by this clumsy forgery? I have always
held that that is probable, though some claim that the text of
Josephus does not favor my idea. The passage about Jesus breaks in
rather abruptly. Yet, clumsy as the forger was -- making a zealous
Jew recognize Jesus as "the Christ [Anointed One]" and the Messiah
at the very height of the bitter feud of Jews and Christians -- he
would hardly pick any random page of the historian for his purpose.
It seems to me not unlikely that he found there a reference to
Jesus, and it would not be surprising if the last sentence of the
passage, which would be just as clumsy for a later Christian to
write, really is from the pen of Josephus.
We are told that an ancient Slavonic version of Josephus'
"Jewish War" (not the "Antiquities") has been discovered, and that
it contains testimony to the historicity of Christ. This may be one
of two things. It may be a Christian interpolation in the "Jewish
War" corresponding to the interpolation in the "Antiquities": or it
may be a genuine Josephus reference to Jesus in sober terms. The
former supposition is by far the more probable, since no later
Christian would venture to cut out a reference to Jesus from our
Greek version of Josephus (unless it was uncomplimentary).
The next most important reference to Jesus is in the "Annals"
of the great Roman historian Tacitus (xv, 44). He mentions the fire
which burned down the poorer quarters of Rome in the year 64 A.D.
It was suspected that Nero had ordered the fire, which caused great
misery at the time, and, Tacitus says, the Emperor diverted
suspicion by blaming the Christians for it and persecuting them. I
will translate the entire passage from the Latin:
In order to put an end to this rumor, therefore, Nero
laid the blame on, and visited with severe punishment, those
men, hateful for their crimes, whom the people call
Christians. He, from whom the name was derived, Christus, was
put to death by the Procurator Pontius Pilatus in the reign of
Tiberius.
Tacitus goes on to describe how "an immense multitude" of
Christians were put to death with fiendish torments, and were
convicted "not so much of the crime of arson as of hatred of the
human race."
This passage has many peculiar features. There cannot possibly
have been "an immense multitude" of Christians at Rome in 64 A.D.
There were not more than a few thousand two hundred years later. It
sounds like a Christian interpolation. On the other hand, Tacitus
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has one of the most distinctive and difficult styles in Latin
literature, and, if this whole passage is a forgery, it is a
perfect imitation. We must, however, not press that argument too
far. It is only the few words about the crucifixion that matter,
and a good Latin scholar could easily achieve that. Professor
Drews' indeed, who has a long and learned dissertation on the
passage, believes it to be a forgery in its entirety, and argues
that there was no persecution of Christians under Nero. He is not
convincing, and it is difficult to believe -- although there have
been other scholars who agreed with Drews -- that the passage
generally was not written by Tacitus. The short sentence about
Pilate may be an interpolation, but I know the peculiarities of the
style of Tacitus too well to think the whole passage forged.
But why spend time over the matter? Tacitus is supposed to
have written this about the year 117 A.D., or nearly eighty years
after the death of Jesus. What does it prove? Only that after the
year 100 there was a general belief in the Christian community that
Jesus was crucified at the order of Pontius Pilate. That is nothing
new. The reference to Pilate in I Timothy, whether Pauline or not,
must be as old as that. Three of the Gospels were then written.
Some Christian writers argue that Tacitus must have seen the
official record of the crucifixion, It is neither likely that any
such official report would be sent to Rome nor that Tacitus looked
up the archives, seventy years later, for such a thing. He was not
the man to make such research or to be interested in such a point.
If the passage is genuine, it shows only that there were in 117
A.D. Christians in Rome who said these things -- which nobody
doubts; and it is not certainly genuine.
I am inclined to accept it because another Roman historian of
about the same date, Suetonius, has an obscure passage, in his
"Life of Claudius" (Chap". xxvi), which seems to refer to the
Christians: "Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome because, at the
instigation of Chrestos, they were always making trouble." Chrestos
was a not uncommon Greek name, and it is urged that it may have
nothing to do with Christ. Claudius died in the year 54 A.D., and
it is almost impossible to imagine that there was sufficient
sectarian fighting between Jews and Christians at Rome over Christ
-- that is the only sense we can give to the sentence -- before the
year 54. On the other hand, the sentence would be quite meaningless
as a Christian interpolation.
On the whole, since it would be too remarkable a coincidence
to find the Jews rioting about a Greek named Chrestos when they
were actually rioting about Christ, I prefer to think that Suetoniu
has heard, and has written in a confused way, about the Jewish
reformer Christ. But it is of even less value than Tacitus. By the
year 120 or 130 the cult of Christ was spread over the Roman world,
and that is all that the mention by Suetonius implies.
Of Dr. Burch's twenty lines there remain only five in a letter
of Pliny the younger to the Emperor Trajan. They say that the
Christians were numerous enough in the province of Bithvnia (Asia
Minor), of which Pliny was Governor, to cause him concern. But he
speaks of them as respectable, law-abiding folk who meet to sing
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hymns at day-break to Christ "as a God." A number of scholars have
disputed the authenticity of the passage or the whole letter; and
it hardly seems plausible that a Proconsul should write to the
Emperor about such a matter. We need not, however, go into this. It
follows only that by 113 there were a good many Christians in Asia
Minor. Apologists merely reveal the desperate poverty of their case
when they quote such things as these Latin sentences to prove that
Jesus really lived nearly a century before.
We may conclude that no non-Christian writer of the first
century mentions Christ -- Josephus being equivocal and certainly
actually adulterated -- and references in the second century are of
no value at all. I repeat, however, that this need not impress us
much. Josephus is the only writer who could reasonably be expected
to mention Christ, and we do not know whether or not be did. The
Christians remained a very obscure sect in a world that was
seething with sects. That is all we can infer; and we knew it.
A BROAD VIEW
It is a commonplace of religious literature that, if the Jesus
of the Gospels did not exist, the creation of his personality by
some obscure writers of the first century must itself be considered
a miracle. Jesus is said to be "the grandest figure in all
literature," and so on. The more the Modernist feels compelled to
sacrifice the miracles and divinity of Jesus, the more zealous he
is to magnify the grandeur of his personality.
Let us try, on the sober common-sense lines which we are
following, to form an impartial opinion on this "figure of Jesus."
Many Rationalist writers have used language about him just as
superlative as that of the liberal theologians. Renan thought that
there was "something divine" about Jesus. J.S. Mill was little less
complimentary. Even Conybeare uses very high language. On the other
hand, G.B. Shaw (in the preface to "Androcles") bluntly says that
Jesus was insane. George Moore (in the preface to his "Apostle" --
one of the most refreshing impressions of the Gospels that you
could read) says that the figure of Christ in Luke, to which the
preachers generally turn, is "a lifeless, waxen figure, daintily
curled, with tinted cheeks, uttering pretty commonplaces gathered
from 'The Treasury of the Lowly' as he goes by." A collection of
the sayings about Jesus by able writers would beautifully
illustrate the truth that on such subjects scarcely anybody tells
the truth.
I have not the least interest in belittling the figure of
Jesus. A liberal parson once genially asked me to "take off my hat
to the universe." I replied that I was not a fool; but that I would
not mind raising my hat to the figure of Christ on the cross -- or
of Bruno at the stake or Socrates in prison. But, mind you, these
others met death more serenely than Jesus did: I mean, if we are to
take Jesus as he is described in the Gospels. No amount of
theological ingenuity will explain that "sweat of blood" in the
garden of Gethsemane; and, if you point to the "Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do," I point to the other words,
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
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If you recall how Jesus loved little children, I remind you
how by his advocacy of virginity as the higher ideal he cut at the
root of family life and blighted love, and how he believed in
eternal torment for people of weak will. If you bring up the
gentleness to the adulterous woman, I remind you of the bitter and
rather vulgar abuse of the Pharisees, to which you will find no
parallel in any pagan moralist of the time. In the Gospels Jesus
utters hardly a single sentiment which, apart from chastity, he
does not violate. He even scorns synagogues and meeting-places, and
then founds a Church. He has not one word of guidance in the great
problems of social life because be believes that the world is
coming to an end. He is the archetype of the Puritans: scornful of
all that is fair in life, bitter and unjust to those who differ
from him, quite impracticable -- nay foolish -- in many of his
counsels. It is absurd to say that our modern world has any use for
Christ.
Now, the plain solution of all this tissue of contradictions,
this mixture of sentiments of humanity with fierce intolerance,
this gentleness to women and children and scorn of love and
comfort, is quite easy after what we have seen: a dozen different
conceptions of Jesus have been blended -- or, not blended, mixed
together -- in these composite writings which we call the Gospels.
Theologians have for ages perspired in attempting to reconcile the
two different genealogies and other contradictions. It is a waste
of time. One man did not write any Gospel. One spirit did not
dictate them. They embody the contradictory opinions of the
isolated and often hostile communities in different parts of the
Greco-Roman world. There is no "figure of Jesus" in the Gospels.
There are a dozen figures. It was not the same man who made Jesus
love children and scorn his mother. It was not the same man who
made Jesus turn water into wine for marriage roisterers (probably
singing what we now call indecent songs) and then advise us to live
on bread and sleep on stones: who made Jesus the warm friend of the
painted lady of Magdala and the advocate of barren isolation from
all that is human. Jesus of Nazareth became in time the Jesus of
Tarsus, of Ephesus, of Corinth, of Antioch, of Alexandria, and so
on. The figure of the pale enthusiast was shaped and colored
differently in a score of different environments. Paul's letters
picture them for us. To one group he has to talk much about
fornication and feasting, to another about correct ritual, to
another about points of theology, and so on.
Must we, then, despair of finding any human Jesus at all, and
suppose that he is a myth who became man in the imaginations of his
followers?
There are some very potent reasons why I cannot agree with my
learned friends in this. Let it be understood that there is no
reason for bias either way. No Rationalist could in our time --
what-ever might be said of Matthew Arnold or Renan or Mill -- be
tempted to think that favoring the historicity of Jesus lessened
the odium of his position. Most people now do not care a cent what
you think about Jesus.
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It seems probable that the phenomena of a Christianity in the
first century imply an historical personage. I have not made a
special study of the point, but from a general knowledge of Hindu
and Chinese sacred literature I should say that we have less
evidence of the personal existence of Kong-fu-tse or Buddha than of
Jesus. The documents are even further removed from the events than
the Epistles and Gospels are. Yet no historian doubts their
historicity. Dr. Couchoud tells of a learned Buddhist priest who
seems to have wondered how far Buddha was historical. But it is not
clear from his five or six words to Dr. Couchoud that he meant more
than that actual details of Buddha's life were unreliable, as in
the case of Jesus.
Broad views are often the best views. We have a large number
of historical and literary events to explain. Beyond any question
there were great numbers of Christian churches in existence before
the end of the first century. Probably Peter was never at Rome, but
the other Roman bishops named, from about 70 A.D. onward, are not
doubted. This group was a thousand miles from Judea; and there were
churches all the way between, with overseers (bishops), elders
(priests), and servers (deacons). Lives of Jesus were circulating
amongst them, and, with all respect to Professor Smith, those lives
or Gospels do unquestionably represent Jesus as a man, living in
Judea. The Church made short work of the Gnostics who held that
Jesus was never contaminated by a bodily frame. Basilides, one of
the ablest of the Gnostics, an Alexandrian, tried to teach in the
first half of the second century that Jesus was never a man; and
the whole Church promptly and emphatically repudiated him. He had
to found a special half-Persian, half-Christian sect.
The Epistles of Paul take us back to about the middle of the
first century. There are then groups of Christians in every large
city. They have no bishops or priests in the modern sense, but
there are "elders" (Timothy, Titus, etc.), and there are some sort
of higher men who appoint them and consider complaints about their
conduct. It is clear that this situation existed certainly by 60
A.D. Paul was closer in touch with them all than any other man was.
I am not relying on Acts, though part of it may be fairly early,
but on the generally accepted Epistles. And Paul's gospel, which in
these respects he does not find challenged anywhere, is quite
clear. His belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus is, he
admits, not accepted by all. That belief is on a different plane,
One could easily be mistaken about it. But that Jesus was born,
taught, and was executed in Judea is at the very basis of Paul's
teaching; and he never mentions any member of a church who doubts
it. The Gnostics with their spiritual Jesus came later.
Moreover, Paul, as we saw, habitually speaks of Cephas and
others who were actual companions of Jesus. We have to deny the
genuineness of all the Epistles to doubt this. In II Corinthians
(iv, 10) Paul says that it is fourteen years since he first came to
believe in Jesus: that is to say, to believe that he was God, not
that he was man. So he joined the Christian body, and mingled with
them in Jerusalem, within less than ten years of the execution of
Jesus. No Jew there seems to have told him that Jesus was a mere
myth. In all the bitter strife of Jew and Christian the idea seems
to have occurred to nobody. Setting aside the Gospels entirely,
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THE STORY OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY
ignoring all that Latin writers are supposed to have said in the
second century, we have a large and roughly organized body of
Christians at a time when men were still alive who remembered
events of the fourth decade of the century.
I conclude only that it is more reasonable to believe in the
historicity of Jesus. There is no parallel in history to the sudden
growth of a myth and its conversion into a human personage in one
generation. Moreover, to these early Christians Jesus is not
primarily a teacher. A collection of wise teachings might in time
get a mythical name attached to it -- though why the name "Jesus"
it is hard to see and the myth might in further time become a real
person. But from the earliest moment that we catch sight of
Christians in history the essence of their belief is that Jesus was
an incarnation, in Judea, of the great God of the universe. The
supreme emphasis is on the fact that he assumed a human form and
shed human blood on a cross. So it seems to me far more reasonable,
far more scientific, far more consonant with the facts of religious
history which we know, to conclude that Jesus was a man who was
gradually turned into a God.
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